to its scantiness, he finds that clear noon inhabits his cell. So we, a

simple triad on empty earth, were multiplied to each other, till we became

all in all. We stood like trees, whose roots are loosened by the wind,

which support one another, leaning and clinging with encreased fervour

while the wintry storms howl. Thus we floated down the widening stream of

the Po, sleeping when the cicale sang, awake with the stars. We entered the

narrower banks of the Brenta, and arrived at the shore of the Laguna at

sunrise on the sixth of September. The bright orb slowly rose from behind

its cupolas and towers, and shed its penetrating light upon the glassy

waters. Wrecks of gondolas, and some few uninjured ones, were strewed on

the beach at Fusina. We embarked in one of these for the widowed daughter

of ocean, who, abandoned and fallen, sat forlorn on her propping isles,

looking towards the far mountains of Greece. We rowed lightly over the

Laguna, and entered Canale Grande. The tide ebbed sullenly from out the

broken portals and violated halls of Venice: sea weed and sea monsters were

left on the blackened marble, while the salt ooze defaced the matchless

works of art that adorned their walls, and the sea gull flew out from the

shattered window. In the midst of this appalling ruin of the monuments of

man's power, nature asserted her ascendancy, and shone more beauteous from

the contrast. The radiant waters hardly trembled, while the rippling waves

made many sided mirrors to the sun; the blue immensity, seen beyond Lido,

stretched far, unspecked by boat, so tranquil, so lovely, that it seemed to

invite us to quit the land strewn with ruins, and to seek refuge from

sorrow and fear on its placid extent.

We saw the ruins of this hapless city from the height of the tower of San

574

The Last Man